Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "A Hard Day's Night" (1964)

I couldn't resist. The Criterion Collection of A Hard Day's Night is out now, and any chance to revisit the movie has to be taken. One of my recommendations for January, our month of musicals, what could have been and was expected to be, just a cheap and fast B-movie set to capitalize on the Beatles phenomenon turned into something a lot more innovative and timeless, thanks to its director Richard Lester. With no small amount due to the Beatles' charm, presence, sense of humor, and of course, the music. It's always a joy to watch and listen to, so here it is again in a specially restored edition- a must own for every Beatles fan.

Original 1964 Trailer:

TEASER: "Big Hero 6"

Ok, so I'm really behind on this particular teaser (over a month late actually), but Disney has a new movie coming out this year (if anything can live up to the phenomenal success of Frozen) around Thanksgiving, and it's their first based on a Marvel property, which of course they now own. A kid with his self-created robot and a bunch of amateur crime fighters try to solve a mystery, and this will probably join The Lego Movie and How to Train Your Dragon 2 as a contender for the Animated Feature Oscar next year. Big Hero 6 comes out November 7th.

TRAILER: "Love is Strange"

Another movie that was raved out of Sundance and is coming out August 22nd is called Love is Strange, and it stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a couple forced to separate for economic reasons after being together for 39 years. The two leads were praised highly for their performances and the premise of the film actually reminds me of a classic movie from 1937 called Make Way for Tomorrow, where an elderly couple was forced to live the rest of their lives separately because of the Great Depression. Watch out for this one.

BOX OFFICE 6/20-6/22: 'Think Like a Man Too' Takes Top Spot

The sequel to the Kevin Hart-starring 2012 hit Think Like a Man opened at No. 1 this weekend, pulling in $30 million, just under the original's $33 million. It held off last week's comedy 22 Jump Street pretty nicely, and will probably play well going forward, since it got an "A-" Cinemascore, although it may not match the first movie's $91 million gross in the end. Still, costing just $24 million to make, it should profit well and be considered a hit, unlike the other new release this weekend, Clint Eastwood's Jersey Boys, which started weak with just $13.5 million. Based on the Broadway smash, the film attracted a much older audience than the usual multiplex crowd and since this one cost $40 million, it won't do much in the way of profits (unless it manages to hold spectacularly well).

Meanwhile, 22 Jump Street fell to second place with $29 million and a $111 million total, while How to Train Your Dragon 2 didn't hold well, sadly, falling to third with $25 million (the relative disappointment of that movie is one of the mysteries of the summer season, but it should still end up with around $170 million). Finally Maleficent rounded out the top five, earning another $13 million for a new total of $186 million, making it one of the biggest hits of the summer, on track to finish ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Godzilla. Also of note, Edge of Tomorrow is holding very well, taking in $10 million this weekend for a $74 million total and may actually cross $100 million, so it looks like word of mouth did help one of the best reviewed action movies this year.

Top 5:

Think Like a Man Too- $30 million
22 Jump Street- $29 million
How to Train your Dragon 2- $25.3 million
Jersey Boys- $13.5 million
Maleficent- $13 million

Next week it's the opening of the new Transformers movie, which could become the biggest hit of the year, unfortunately, given how all the summer "blockbusters" this season haven't really lived up to that term, with none crossing $250 million total. Is no one going to the movies this summer? We'll find out when the inexplicably popular franchise makes its fourth debut. Also opening in limited release are Once director John Carney's new musical Begin Again, and South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's sci-fi epic Snowpiercer, for audiences looking for alternatives (I know I will be). See you then!

TRAILER: "The Good Lie"

Reese Witherspoon is attempting something of a comeback this year, as she's got three movies coming out in the fall season, Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, Jean Marc-Vallee's Wild, and this one, a true story about an American woman who helped four Sudanese refugees make it in America. It's from the producers of The Blind Side and to be honest it looks a little similar to that movie. It's coming out October 3rd:

REVIEW: "The Lego Movie" (2014) Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks. Dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

You gotta hand it to this new writing/directing duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street). Would anyone walk into a movie about the adventures of animated legos and think it wouldn't turn out to be a corporate advertisement for the toy product alone? I certainly wouldn't, and I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised, as The Lego Movie is in fact a delightful, wickedly funny and mile a minute meta heavy madcap romp through the Lego universe, with only a minimum of commercial advertizing involved (can't get away from it entirely- the movie does want to make you buy and play with some legos, and I'm sure that worked to the manufacturing company's benefit).

But there is a high energy, creative force at work behind it anyway, and the movie feels unlike the usual safe, sweet, typical animated features that come out every year, solely about triumphing over adversity (the only message that is ever imparted by an animated film for the most part). This movie is actually a celebration of both individualism and collectivism (that's right, simultaneously). Set in the brightly colored world of legos, our protagonist is an everyman, Emmet (voiced with sly enthusiasm by Chris Pratt, of TV's Parks and Recreation), who fits into the world around him so easily that his friends describe him as a nobody with no particular ideas or interests whatsoever. He doesn't question authority and subscribes to the doctrine of "instructions" by the land's evil leader, President Business (Will Ferrell), whose goal is to force everyone to be wrung from a similar cloth in personality, attitude, etc. so that he can ultimately rule over the citizens and eventually "freeze" them all in place. There is an underground group of rebels who set out to stop him of course, and Emmet accidentally falls into this crowd when he stumbles onto a construction site and apprehends "the piece of resistance," which all the rebels assume makes him the chosen one they've been waiting for- "The Special," who was foretold to them in a prophecy imparted by the great one (Morgan Freeman, who else?)

So now Emmet has to prove his worth and we're taken on a wild ride through all the different lego universes as the various familiar lego toys (there are appearances by Batman, Superman and the Star Wars guys) show up and form a ragtag group to save the universe. Throughout all of this we're treated to a mad-dash pace of zaniness and jokes tossed at you a mile a minute (I know I missed some), with the typical pop culture and meta-references thrown in for good measure (Liam Neeson plays a "bad cop" in a riff off his Taken personality, while Will Arnett's Batman tosses in asides to his most recent Dark Knight persona). If the original Shrek was the first movie to go all in with inside jokes aimed at the audience's knowledge and familiarity with the outside world of fairy tales, this is that kind of humor on steroids. It makes me wonder if we can ever go back to the un-ironic, non-winking at the camera kind of entertainment again, or if this is the new normal, and movies are now in a forever kind of smug conversation with the audience over the things we know, with them telling us how much they know we know.

But it's clever and entertaining anyway, despite the atomic level of self-awareness (Lord and Miller do the same with the Jump Street movies), and the lesson Emmet eventually learns in fact isn't necessarily about his own "specialness," but only that in combination with the talents of others, can they work together as a society to build something truly original and creative. I admit I was taken aback that this endorsement of flat out collectivism turned out to be the message of the movie, but hey, these guys are legos, so it makes sense, right? (Now see if an animated film would ever dare to convey the same message regarding human society- that'll be the day). The final twist on the world of the legos, while clever and involving a cameo appearance whose very presence never fails to make audiences smile, kind of puts the movie in direct placement as a feature length ad for Legos, as I said earlier, but I guess it's alright. By that point we've probably had enough of this world for now. But if 95 minutes is a more than adequate stay in the Lego World, just wait until the inevitable sequels turn this creatively refreshing movie into a franchise cash cow the way the Shrek sequels sullied the first one. However, since that day's not yet here, feel free to enjoy this while it lasts.

* * *

TRAILER: "The Judge"

Robert Downey Jr. stars in a non-Iron Man movie, and it's a drama of all things. Been a while since we've seen that, right? This looks like kind of a sentimental tearjerker on first glance, but who knows, maybe it'll be good. RDJ is a lawyer who has to go back to his hometown and defend his estranged dad (Robert Duvall) on a murder charge. They've got some good people in the cast anyway. It's coming out October 10th.

POSTER: "Frank"

Here's the poster for Frank, the weird indie comedy coming out in August with Michael Fassbender as the rocker who wears a giant Jack in the Box-esque plastic head. Sounds bizarre (and it is, even though it's based on a true story) but the movie got great reviews both at Sundance, where it debuted and again at SIFF a couple weeks ago. It comes out August 22nd.

FINAL TRAILER: "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"

Looks awesome! The last trailer for what's really the last anticipated blockbuster movie of the summer (they pretty much all came out before July this year) is here. I can't wait to see it. Coming out July 11th.

TRAILER: "The Expendables 3"

The new trailer for The Expendables 3 is here, otherwise known as Sylvester Stallone's ongoing project to keep his over the hill former action hero pals (and apparently Kelsey Grammer) employed (or at least the ones willing to settle for a "mere" couple million dollars, unlike Bruce Willis was for the last one). The actual fans of this series are supposedly upset that this one got the PG-13 rating, which I guess is valid. I mean, the only thing this franchise is about is watching these guys explode shit and kill people in the most violent ways possible, so why water that part down? It's coming out August 15th, if you're into this (clearly, I'm not a fan).

FEATURETTE: "Begin Again"

A look behind the scenes at Begin Again, from John Carney (the director of Once), coming out next Friday in limited release. This shows how Keira Knightley did in fact do her own singing for this movie, and she's not bad. It's weird how some people can sound completely different in their speaking and singing voices and others not at all.

Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975)

A really terrific movie is out on blu-ray today- a mysterious and elegiac mood piece from the great Australian director Peter Weir, and this is one of his earliest films. Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the story of four teenage girls in turn of the century Australia who suddenly vanish one day into the strangely beckoning rocks of the Outback, and no one can figure out what happened to them. Was it real? Is it an allegory for female subjugation in the early 1900's? Or something else entirely? See if you can break through the silence when you watch it- Weir gives us no answers, only unsettling and provocative questions and atmosphere. You can't miss this one, it's one of the great films of the 1970's.

Original 1975 Trailer: